I 



Neiv Hcbridcan Dresses. 55 



seating a large company, and I have seen in old native churches mats many j-ards 

 square covering the whole floor, there being no pews or seats of other nature. From 

 their size and weight they were seldom removed, and often became unsanitar^•, accord- 

 ing to modern ideas. 



The bed mats have been several times referred to, but the\' ma}- be more fullj' 

 described here as a series of mats woven, in the best houses, to fit an allotted place, 

 and arranged in accordance with their fineness from the coarsest, which rested on the 

 gravel floor of the house, to the fine mat on top that showed the wealth or taste of the 

 owner. To keep the mats in place (and as the whole family slept on the same bed, 

 and some of the bedfellows might be uneasy from overfeeding, this was no simple 

 matter) mats of the hikiec were sewed together along one edge, and this edge generally 

 raised by the interposition of strips of the same matting. 



Matting of the lauhala in coarse weave, one inch strands or larger, were in con- 

 stant use to cover propert\- from the sun or sudden showers, to spread nuts or herbs 

 iipon while drj-ing in the sun, and to wrestle on in an indigenous form of that maul}- 

 exercise, where the contestants clasped hands and, without touching any other part of 

 the body, endeavored each to push the other off the mat. In the earl^- days of the 

 American Mission on these islands the simple homes of the missionaries were generally 

 carpeted, if at all, with lavihala mats woven to fit the room, and examples are still ex- 

 tant of mats of great beauty given b}' early converts to their respe(5led teachers. 



New Hebridean Dresses. — On several of the islands of the New Hebrides, 

 a group using the loom, and famous for fibre weaving, are found dresses of finely cut 

 pandanus, so closely resembling grass work, that until the material was considerably 

 magnified the author was inclined to class them with the makaloa mats of the Hawaiians. 

 As will be seen in Fig. 56, they are aprons of no generous size (some are hardly two 

 inches wide), but the peculiarity' of their openwork weave recalls the Tongan mats of 

 the opposite side of the Pacific. These aprons are worn by the women by means of 

 some sort of belt, and on some of the islands are stained a magenta red which does not 

 add to their beauty in the eyes of a foreigner, and almost conceals the openwork pat- 

 terns. Some of those from Malekula have been washed until the pandanus fibre is 

 broken and roughened. The following list of women's dresses from Malekula, Oba 

 and Ambrym shows the difference in size: 



8143. 3.2 ft. X 10 in. — 16 strands to inch. Malekula, twilled weave, no coloring; 

 Fig. 56, No. 3. 



8144. 3 ft.X9 in. — 15. Malekula, plain weave; Fig. 56, No. i. 



8145. 3 ft.Xii in. — 14. Malekula, twilled; Fig. 56, No. 2. 



